Festering fungus has become a problem way down in the bowels of NASA, and could lead to false identification of extraterrestrial material.
Research (PDF) presented at the 49th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference revealed that, in one clean room at least, NASA has a bit of an issue with earthly fungi.
Scientists at the NASA …

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"...swabs taken..."

"...but swabs taken from the floor, a table, the inside of a laminar flow bench used to process meteorites and a nitrogen filter all produced fungal growths."

Swabs. -> reminds me of 'The Phantom of Heilbronn'.

Wiki: "The Phantom of Heilbronn....was a hypothesized unknown female serial killer whose existence was inferred from DNA evidence found at numerous crime scenes in Austria, France and Germany from 1993 to 2009. ...The only connection between the crimes was DNA, ...the DNA recovered at the crime scenes had already been present on the cotton swabs used for collecting DNA samples; they belonged to a woman who worked at the factory where they were made."

diagnosis

Environmental monitoring

I work for a pharmaceutical manufacturer, and have spent many, uncomfortable, hours in cleanrooms, servicing equipment, and doing particle counting to assess the air quality. There is always regular environmental monitoring going on: swabbing surfaces, sampling the air, and the people's clean-room clothing, putting sample onto agar and seeing if they grow. I'd be very surprised if NASA *weren't* doing the same. So any contamination should be picked up fairly quickly. In the pharma industry, contamination in injectable drug products leads to the dreaded product recall, and damage to reputation like you wouldn't believe...

Bah!

"NASA astrobiologist Daniel Glavin, author of a paper concerning amino acids in meteorites told Science magazine that the findings had caused him to rethink his research, with the acids possibly having a more earthly origin."

Or, to quote verbatim from an imagined tape of the statement: "Buggering bollocky bastard! That's my Nobel flushed down the pan! And f*ck that f*cking lab cleaning service! I'm totally suing somebody over this fiasco!"